


Not Quite

by RoryKurago



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Christmas Presents, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Jaeger Academy, M/M, Pre-Movie(s), Secret Santa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-11 23:21:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9040883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoryKurago/pseuds/RoryKurago
Summary: There are four memorable occasions on which Stacker sees Herc Hansen not quite naked.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [somethingsomething](https://archiveofourown.org/users/somethingsomething/gifts).



> Please enjoy gratuitous holiday nudity! Still not sure how this happened, but it did and I hope it's up your alley. Apologies for roughness; it took longer to finish than I thought, and I haven't really had time to revise and polish.  
> Happy holidays <3

There are four memorable occasions on which Stacker sees Herc Hansen not quite naked.

The first is during the physical. It’s not nudity in the strictest sense because those briefs stay on, but it’s a technicality: they hide very little--least of all that one corded scar curving down Herc’s hip. He claimed, the first time Stacker asked about it, that it's a war wound from chasing feral dogs straight into a barbed wire fence in a gully.

Stacker isn't looking at it sidelong as Herc pulls off his undershirt and wondering how far down it goes. He’s not. This is what he’s doing: standing in a line of pilot candidates. Letting the others' banter wash over him as he slowly unbuttons his shirt in what passes for a medical bay in this half-constructed launch facility. Waiting to find out if he's fit enough to save the world.

The medical staff direct them to lay their clothes over the benches behind them and step back into line. This process is a one Stacker anticipated but he’s surprised to find tension thrumming through his body despite this. In choreographed motions he strips off slacks, socks, undershirt. Folds them. Lays them neatly over the bench.

He hasn’t been in a live cockpit in years. Briefly he thinks that the shiver is anxiety—another ghost of missions past. Then he gets to Luna’s ring.

Luna's, his mother's, Tamsin's except that she wouldn’t let him give it to her after they cleaned out Luna’s locker. With the band between his fingers, there’s that old-new clench of his heart.

Not anxiety: rage. A physical _willing_ of the doctors to allow him into one of these beasts Doctors Lightcap and Schoenfeld have conjured, and the desire to slay a dragon.

Straightening, he pushes his shoulders back and forces himself to draw a deep breath to the count of seven. Luna’s ring remains hanging next to his tags.

Crouched on Stacker's left, Herc twists to speak to the next person in line. There's a spray of freckles across the dip and curve of his back that Stacker's never seen so clearly before. They crease as Herc bends. A memory strikes Stacker: dirt on the back of Luna’s jacket—young Luna, trying to jump a chainlink fence, catching her feet. Luna rolling in the dirt and coming up with a fist, daring him to laugh. He wonders how Herc went down: face first over the wire? Or did he clear it and then lose his footing and fall backward?

Herc rises from his crouch and kicks his boots under the bench. He’s about as tall and broad as Stacker—something Stacker has been aware of for some time but not fully cognisant of until right this moment when they stand barefoot on the tiles with nothing between them but those briefs and a foot of air. No uniforms, no ranks, no titles.

Stacker feels smaller without them. Herc looks larger. Is it enough, Stacker wonders? For what they need to do?

Herc’s eye catches Stacker’s as he turns to rejoin the line.

“Regretting all those sausages for brekkie now,” he jokes, slapping Stacker on the shoulder with a laugh. It sounds easy and unforced. Lighter than the weight the slump of his shoulders sometimes makes him seem to be carrying. It sounds like they might still have a chance.

Stacker manages to chuckle. “You and I both.”

Herc’s still grinning when he steps into line. Stacker is only a breath behind. Their sons are in the base school together right now. In a few years, although Stacker doesn’t know it, this will become their sons and daughter. Stacker is piloting with Tamsin. Herc is training with his brother. They aren’t aware yet of how deep the Drift will go. But Stacker is very, very aware of the rise and fall of Herc’s chest as the candidates ettle in to wait; the dip of his spine; the quiver when the stethoscope's cold metal touches skin.

It’s not enough yet that Stacker worries about the Non-Frat regulations. He is here for one purpose only, and that is to slay a dragon. But it's enough that he’s still thinking about it later when the Aussie sits down across from him in the mess. Herc’s brought his kid—sour-faced and scruffy-haired as the last time Stacker saw him, less than impressed by meatloaf and rehydrated peas. At Stacker’s side, Jake looks about as impressed with Chuck.

Stacker makes conversation just to be polite. The kid gives him a glower that could unfreeze the Aleutians.

Stacker chooses not to take it personally. Maybe it’s just payback for spending the physical wondering if the scar on Herc’s hip stretches all the way down to his thigh.

Still, Herc’s grateful look is… Well.

Stacker glances at Jake, who is dutifully munching his broccoli without complaint. On the other side of the table Herc is negotiating with Chuck how many vegetables justify the pudding cups Chuck is hoarding. He doesn’t see Stacker’s thoughtful expression.

...

 

The second time is also at the Academy, but now they’re Jaeger pilots—several months into training and with Pons experience under their belts. They have a more than passing familiarity with the sweeps and currents of each other’s minds. Lightcap and d’Onofrio have taken down a kaiju, humanity is on the up-and-up—and Tamsin’s in her cups.

She’s the one who suggested it, Stacker would bet money. But whoever the instigator is, the short version is this:

There is a cadre of Jaeger pilot candidates full of spirits, in high spirits, gathered in the atrium of a training facility in what passes for summer on Kodiak Island, stark naked under their overcoats and waiting for the signal to ditch the covers and streak through town.

Stacker almost doesn’t go. He is, to his mind, fairly distinctive and there’s only so much coverage a paper bag can provide when one is literally running naked through the streets. Even that aside: he’s a RAF Major, a PPDC pilot candidate, and this is the War. There may never be another one like it—will never be another one at all if they don’t win.

These are also the reasons he does go.

Luna’s ring beat against his breastbone as he'd stripped off his shirt and thrown it at Tamsin’s head on the way out of the locker room.

“ _After you, fam,_ ” he’d declared. As she groaned in disgust, swatting at her shirt-wrapped head, he’d grabbed a paper bag and his jacket and headed to the RV point. There are several other cadets his height, build, and colour. Hell, the candidates might all be dead in six months. Stacker is going out in a blaze of guts and glory.

This was before Herc Hansen appeared in front of him in the atrium penguin huddle, bare legs goosebumping under his jacket.

“Bloody cold for this sort 'f stupidity,” he laughs.

“Welcome to the north,” Stacker says dryly. He keeps his eyes at head level.

Tamsin collides with Herc’s shoulder, a bottle of Fireball in one hand and her paper bag in the other. “Ay, Hansen! You’re in for it after all? Excellent! Where’s yer other 'alf?”

Herc waves vaguely behind him. Scott, Stacker sees, is on the other side of the huddle, chatting to some female runners.

A bottle is thrust in front of Stacker’s nose. Tamsin grins. “Something t' warm you up, bruv?”

Stacker takes it without complaint; knocks back a hearty swig before he offers it to Herc. Herc throws his head back for a swallow even bigger than Stacker’s.

“Dutch courage. Haven’t done this shit since Uni. If this ends up on the bloody Net, I’ll never live it down.” He hands the bottle back to Tamsin.

She’s tucking it back into her coat pocket just as the signal to strip comes. Shooting Stacker a wicked grin, she slips her coat, winks at Herc, and then pulls the bag over her head and disappears into the stream of naked bodies pouring out into the twilight.

It’s late, but there are still people around. Stacker falls into step with Herc as the group whoops and begins to space out. Their energy is infectious. It’s the kind of shenaniganry for the young and dumb, and as predicted it’s still bloody cold - Stacker can hear Tamsin cursing and laughing somewhere up ahead - but honestly it feels good just to run and misbehave and have _fun_ for once.

Additionally: watching Herc Hansen run starkers except for a paper bag is a revelation. It puts sparks under Stacker's skin in a very different way to the frigid Alaskan wind on his particulars.

As they round the first waypoint, a bystander starts yelling. Howling with laughter, the streakers ahead pick up speed. As a pack, they sprint and then string out, hooting and hollering.

They run until their hearts race and their skin burns with the cold. Several more locals yell at them; a couple give chase. Stacker and Herc sprint past a knot of clothed people laughing their arses off and Stacker figures, well, that’s probably the Coast Guard.

By the time they make it back to the locker room, Stacker’s skin feels both hot and cold, his chest is heaving, and he’s laughing like he hasn’t since before K-Day.

Herc strips off his paper bag but doesn’t bother to cover up. He’s laughing the way Stacker is—deep belly laughs, free from weight and weariness. In twos and threes, the streakers filter in—some worse off than others. Scott comes in with mud all the way up one side and his bag soggy and shredded.

Leaning on each other to stay upright, Herc and Stacker laugh until Stacker’s ribs ache. There’s an echo to the sensation he’s coming to recognise as Drift hangover—ghosting someone else’s body. Herc's. With their bodies shaking, they bump shoulders, hips, heads.

It isn’t sexual in the slightest. There’s still that scar on Herc’s hip that Stacker wants to run his fingers and then tongue over, but it’s more than that:

It’s the ease with which Stacker can forget they’re in a room full of bare-ass naked pilot candidates. It’s the feeling of being part of something bigger than himself and knowing exactly his place in it. It’s Herc’s forehead against his own, and their synchronised breathing as they come down from the runner’s high.

Herc’s shoulder is warm and solid under Stacker’s arm. His hand on Stacker’s back, holding on for support while he laughs himself red in the face, is icy.

...

The third time isn’t sexy at all: it’s traumatic. Herc is hauled boneless out of the Conn. Stacker is there to see him thrown convulsing onto an operating table and cut out of his drivesuit.

It’s Manila, 2019, and it’s the last time Lucky Seven will ever ride.

Scott’s in the next theatre. Stacker couldn't give a flying fuck about him: Stacker had been in LOCCENT. He’d heard the radio chatter. It was on Scott that Lucky Seven had gone out of alignment and then gone down with her face caved in after the kaiju - bony-skulled like a Pachycephalosaurus - had realised its opponent was unresponsive and headbutted the Conn into mashed potato.

Stacker is the co-ordinating officer on site. It’s his job to manage the PPDC’s assets. But that rage is back and his stomach is burning where blood pumps out of Herc’s shredded circuitry suit. So instead of going to check on the conscious, less-injured Hansen brother as he ought to, Stacker stays.

He stands motionless by the observation window while the nurses swab blood off Herc’s scar in their attempts to locate the shrapnel of Lucky’s faceplate that punctured him when it punched through the drivesuit.

There’s so much blood. One of Herc’s legs is still encased in circuitry suit. The rest of him lies bare in a suit flayed open like a shark egg split on the beach: all blood and pseudo-amniotic fluid and Herc twitching in the middle like something not ready to be born.

Stacker wants to turn away. He fingers the Metharocin tin in his pocket instead and stays.

Someone comes to talk to him about the other pilots - the Beckets, Po, Shen. They’re all alive, awake, uninjured. Stacker waves the person off after assuring them he will make a prompt appearance at the debrief just as soon as… As what?

Inside the theatre, medical staff shout and flurry and there’s still Herc in the middle, limp now and slack with his head rolled back and that scar white white in the red on his hip.

The worst of it traverses Herc’s abdomen, as it turns out. Not deep enough to sever intestines, but he’ll have another ugly scar.

‘ _No more bikinis_ ,’ Stacker can hear him say, with that same old sun-cracked-leather smile.

Watching the doctors root around for shrapnel, glass, seared wires, Stacker feels the digging in his own flesh— burning, needling pains in his arms and chest. There’s a pain up the back of his skull like a sinus headache and a brain freeze rolled up, and he thinks—

He passes the door to Scott’s ward on the way to debrief the other Rangers and keeps right on walking.

 

He's sitting by Herc's bed when Herc regains consciousness later that night. The sound of him stirring pulls Stacker out of the report he was scrolling through on a tablet. Herc is watching him.

"Can't believe I'm back in a fuckin' paper gown with my arse hanging out," he slurs when Stacker looks up.

Stacker doesn't speak for a moment to cover the shiver in his lungs that won't let his exhale flow smoothly. Eventually he says, "The nurses appreciate it."

"Do you?"

"Mate, I've done my time in the tissue paper gown. This round's on you."

Herc chuckles and then winces, hissing. "How's Scott?" he asks when the pain subsides.

Stacker doesn't let on that he's feeling it too. "Alive."

"Chuck?"

"The counsellor is talking to him at the Academy. He wanted to fly out, but was persuaded to stay put. I believe Mako had a hand in that."

Herc closes his eyes. "Thanks." After a moment's silence, he muttered, "Bloody paper dresses."

Stacker chuckles and returns to his reading.

...

 

The fourth time goes like this:

Stacker gets off a plane. It’s dark, it’s late, and it’s Christmas for the third time with all the bouncing across timezones that Stacker has done in the last thirty-six hours. Mako is tied up in Hong Kong trying to chase down parts for a Mark-III, Jake is... Jake, and not in the mood for a family shindig. Tendo is in California with family. There are others Stacker could seek out, but… He is so tired of people.

Herc is sitting in the armchair by the heater in the living room of Stacker’s quarters when Stacker walks in.

He’s naked except for a reindeer antler headband and dancing-snowman socks.

Stacker toes the door shut behind him and puts his briefcase down very slowly. Herc gets to his feet.

“Just so we’re clear,” Stacker says, “if you call me ‘Santa’, I’m walking back out that door.”

Herc chuckles—that belly-deep, easy laugh that Stacker feels at the base of his spine. “Nah, love: this ain’t that kind of role play. Sorry we couldn’t be here for the Christmas party,” he says, pouring out two lowballs of something on the sideboard. “Got kind of roped up in PR muck in Sydney.”

“Oh?” says Stacker, accepting a glass. “I heard about Robson’s dismissal, but…?”

Herc shakes his head. “It’s Christmas, and I got all kitted out in my festive best,” he says, raising his own glass. “Worry about it another time.”

“If you say so. Meanwhile—” Stacker reaches up and pokes one of the bells dangling off the antler tines. It tinkles. “—mind telling me what this is about?”

Herc grins. “Ah, just someone playing silly buggers who thought they’d have a lark and hang mistletoe over the door. But I thought… well, we’re a bit past kissin’ in the threshold like a coupla horny teenagers.”

Stacker considers that as he sniffs the contents of his glass. He breathes an appreciative sigh. “You bought this for me specially?”

“Ordered it special from the UK. Had to actually go into the post office and chase it down in person, though. Bunch of bloody larrikins.”

Stacker sips and hums with pleasure. Moving away, he loosens his tie one handed and then drapes it over the back of the armchair. “So.”

Herc’s leaning on the table when Stacker looks back, arms loosely folded, wearing a smug expression Stacker rarely sees but recognises instantly as Chuck’s.

Is that, he wonders, Drift crossover or hereditary? He looks Herc over very slowly, socks to antlers.

“If we’re not roleplaying,” he says, “this is…?”

“A present. Late, but—”

“Is this the part where someone makes a candy cane joke?”

Grinning, Herc pushes off the table and crosses the room. “Yeah, nah. But, I mean… I’ve got peppermint-flavoured condoms if that’s what you’re feeling, but...”

Stacker reaches out for his hip when he gets close enough. “Let’s just start with the scotch and go from there.”


End file.
